I wanted to know what people thought of cross platform app development and what application would be best to develop one with? How hard is it to get a cross platform app approved for the iTune store?

Many thanks!

Hi, cross platform is really nice for a lot of applications. I have used Phonegap (cordova) to make a cross platform app between Android and Windows Phone 7. Something you should note is that you still have to download and setup the appropriate develpment environments for example I used Visual Studio 2010 for WP7 and Eclipse for Android, which would also mean you also need the one for iOS presumably. This would also mean you need the developer accounts which last I checked were $99 for WP7 and iOS. I may be wrong and there may be a way around it anyway but just something to look into.

If you get it all set up though it is fairly convenient being able to copy over all your code and have it available in all three (or more) markets, tripling your potential users/profit.

Also Phonegap is html/javascript which isnt exactly a good choice for game creation, but it is quite nice for many other apps.

I wanted to know what people thought of cross platform app development and what application would be best to develop one with? How hard is it to get a cross platform app approved for the iTune store?

Many thanks!

Generally people do not get to know that the app is build for multiple platform. PhoneGap is the best supporting framework for the job, you need to have knowledge of HTML5. Once imported it provides you WWW folder in your native app SDK where you have to write up codes for your app.
Untill and unless your app fulfill Apples' criteria there is no any issue for your app to get approved over AppStore.

There are two the most appropriate tools for cross-platform software development. They are PhoneGap and Appcelerator Titanium. The choice depends on the operating systems and devices your app is intended to run on.

PhoneGap is an open-source development framework for creating cross-platform software. HTML5-based web applications can be deployed and installed as native ones. PhoneGap software stands out owing to a number of platforms it can encompass. Its other feature is less efforts required to create the software.

Appcelerator Titanium is a platform for creating mobile, tablet and desktop applications. It utilizes JavaScript while creating a native mobile application, and compiles to native code for deployment. A set of mobile development APIs can be adapted across platforms.

So, if you want your app to work on several operating systems – cross-platform development is really what you need. All that you have to do is to choose the most effective tool for the development.

I have to disagree with the other posts. "Cross-platform" sounded great when tools like PhoneGap came out, as it promised all kinds of things with regards to being able to do apps in HTML5 and "seemlessly" propagate to all platforms. However, in actual practice, it falls flat on its face in many cases (i.e. do you really want your complex business logic written in HTML and javascript? lol).

Large companies like LinkedIn and Facebook have completely scrapped their HTML5 apps and gone back to native development. The experience with a native app vs a mobile "web" app is not even remotely questionable; the experience is MUCH better on a natively built app.

Nowadays with the tools and libraries available across platforms, natively-built apps can be done in a reasonable amount of time and within budgets. I myself do both Android and iOS native development, and I can guarantee I can build the same app on both platforms in probably less time it takes a web-dev to create one HTML5 app that looks as good on both platforms.

I think there are still edge-cases in which HTML5 apps should be written and deployed, but for the most part, they continue to be (and should be) a dying breed. Having to deal with 2 separate native code-bases is not necessarily a bad thing when you have two completely different types of platforms.

The above reasons are just a few, as the list goes on and on for reasons to steer clear of web-based applications for the most part. I'm knee-deep in the mobile development world, and I've followed the trends very closely, and these are my observations.

The main challenge in apps development is to create cross platform mobile apps that can take advantage of any operating system platform. While developing an App that can be used in different operating system platforms, it is essential that the app works exactly the same way from one platform to the other without losing its efficiency. Every business needs a developer who understands the challenges with cross platform mobile app development....

The idea behind most cross-platform frameworks is to limit development time by having users write their code in one language that can easily be compiled to multiple platforms.

To do this, most frameworks allow users to write apps in a dynamic programming language (JavaScript is the most common, though many frameworks also support Ruby or Python), rather than in Objective-C/Cocoa, Java or C#/.NET. The frameworks will then compile against the native libraries of a specific platform and spit out an app for each platform the developer targets.Phonegap is the best crossplatform tool for developing applications. Thanks..Hope it might help you.